He grabbed at the weapon again. “Give me the fucking thing.” They surrounded him threateningly and he heard Bester’s voice, just as breathless as his: “Give it to him.”
He grabbed, the phone rang, rang, rang. Lord, let them answer. He saw the BMW between the army troop carriers – the fuckers had parked him in. Three soldiers with a big black man, Tiny, the Mercedes-Benz ML 320. Tiny saw him coming.
“We’ve got to move,” he yelled. “Schlebusch is dead. This morning.” Mpayipheli just nodded, couldn’t catch the words, only the urgency. He ran to the car as the telephone rang and rang and rang.
♦
She jumped, startled when the telephone rang. She was working, had fetched her files to work next to the telephone. The phone was quiet this morning and she had thought about Van Heerden’s replies to her questions and then it suddenly rang.
“Hallo.”
“Is that Hope Beneke again?”
She recognized the voice, the same male voice. “Yes.”
“How did you get that photograph of Bushy?”
“We…why do you want to know?”
“Have you got photos of all of us?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to publish them?”
“If it’s necessary.”
“Necessary for what?”
“To get the will.”
“But I have nothing to do with the will.”
“Then you have nothing to fear.”
“It’s not that simple.”
♦
Billy September heard the telephone ringing, ran to the bedroom where he had slept and grabbed his carry bag from under the bed, hauled out the Remington 870 shotgun by its stock, chambered one shell, gripped the gun in his hand, ran back, gave the weapon to Carolina de Jager. “There are four shots in the magazine, one in the breech. Wait until he’s close.” She took the gun, obviously not a first for her. He looked out of the window, the telephone still ringing. Who would phone now? The four armed men were just twenty meters away – he would have to shoot now. Where the fuck was Joan van Heerden? He ran to the back door, looked out toward the stables, saw nothing – wait, there she was, carrying a pail, wearing green gum boots, on her way back to the house, but he couldn’t shout, they were too close. He ran to the living-room window, telephone ringing, aimed the AK over the burglarproofing, lined up the one with the beret, drew a bead on his lower body, pumped out three shots, saw him fall, the others scattering. Suddenly not so calm anymore, suddenly frenetic. He laughed, high and tense, as the window in front of him exploded in a thousand pieces, holes in the plaster, Wilna van As screaming in the bedroom. He fell flat, blood dripping – the glass had cut him. He saw Carolina de Jager behind the couch with a small smile on her lips and the Remington in front of her, putting out her hand to the telephone. He pushed the AK’s barrel through the window, pulled the trigger a few times, crept to the front door, hearing the automatic fire outside. He knew he’d got one. Jesus, Billy September, you’re an expert in unarmed combat, look at you shooting the whiteys now.
♦
Bester Brits ran into the door of the Mercedes and banged on the closed window with his hands. “Van Heerden! Wait!”
He wound down the window, telephone against his ear, still ringing. Tiny Mpayipheli started the engine. “What is it?”
“Where are you going?”
“My mother. They’re going to attack my mother.”
“How do you know?”
“I know, Bester. It was…a trap.”
“I have a helicopter, Van Heerden.”
“Where?”
“In the air. Behind Karbonkelberg.” Bester waved his hand toward the west.
“Carolina?” he screamed into the cell phone, hearing gunshots in the background, knowing he was right.
“There are four of them,” she shouted. “Four of them.” And then the phone went dead and he threw it against the front window of the Mercedes with all his might and roared something indecipherable and jumped out and grabbed Bester by the chest. “Are there soldiers in the chopper, Brits? Tell me!”
“Yes,” said Bester, softly and calmly, and pulled Van Heerden’s hands away from his jacket. “There’s a radio in the Unimog.”
♦
Hope Beneke tried to remember the names on Van Heerden’s list because the man at the other end was one of them, and she wrote: “Red. Manley. Porra.” She couldn’t remember more than that.
“Have you got all the new names?” he asked.
“Sir, I’m not authorized to share the information with anyone over the telephone.”
“Please, I understand that. I just want…I have nothing to do with the will. How can I prove it?”
“By coming to talk to us, sir.”
“They’ll kill me.”
“Who?”
“Schlebusch.”
“You said ‘they.’ ”
“You know who. You know.”
“We can meet somewhere.”
“Is this line safe?”
“Of course.”
“Will you keep the photos out of the newspapers until we’ve talked?”
She had an inspiration: “I can only keep them back for today, sir. Tomorrow Die Burger will be placing everyone from 1976.”
“No,” he said, his voice filled with fear. “Please. I’ll phone again in an hour. I’ll meet you somewhere.”
The line was suddenly quiet. She smiled. This was better. Much better. Then pressed the button on the phone. She had to tell Van Heerden about this.
They. He had said “they.”
Her stomach contracted.
“The subscriber you have dialed is not available…”
♦
On his uniform the pilot wore the badge of the Twenty-second Squadron with the inscription UT MARE LIBERUM SIT. He turned the helicopter’s nose in the direction of Robben Island. “Eleven, twelve minutes,” he said.
“It’s too slow.” Bester’s voice crackled over the radio.
“It’s an old Oryx, Colonel, with a top speed of about three hundred. It’s the best I can do.”
“Bester out.”
The pilot pressed the intercom button. “Hot insertion, ten minutes,” he said, and heard the sudden activity at the back, fourteen men of the Anti-Terrorist Unit clicking clasps, cocking weapons. Hell, he thought, at last. Something more exciting than a fishing trawler on the rocks.
∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧
46
Her name was Nonnie and when she opened the door the wait of a lifetime was over – because I knew she was the One.
How can I describe that moment?
I’ve played it over and over in my head during the past years, that first, magical moment, that overwhelming awareness, that euphoric, immediate knowledge when I looked at her. My eyes drank her in with the thirst of thirty-four years, this gentle, gentle woman, her laughter. She stood there in a one-piece bathing suit because she had been lying next to the small, cheap plastic pool, and when she opened the door her eyes and her beautiful mouth had laughed (the one front tooth was just a millimeter askew) and her voice was sweeter than Mozart: “You must be Van Heerden.” And I looked into her eyes, deep and green and large and shining. There was so much life there, humor and sympathy and heartbreak and joy. I looked at her body, those curves – she was tall, feminine, fertile – and forgive me, but it seemed as if nature shouted out of her body, her divine hips, the handfuls of breasts, the small curve of her stomach, her legs strong, her feet small. She was a siren, irresistibly seductive, her short brown hair, her neck, her shoulders, her eyes, her mouth. I wanted to drink her, to taste, to swallow, to slake that unbelievable thirst.